Service providers, such as cable or satellite providers, may send content to customer or user locations where it may be viewed and/or interacted with by a user using one or more devices at the user location. For example, content, such as video content, may be viewed by a user using a set-top box connected to a television or other display device at a user location. The content may be sent to the user location as data streams using various formats, such as Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM), which may include one or more encoded channels carrying the content. The rate of content delivery sent to a user location may vary according to various compression techniques that may be applied to QAM channels, such as MPEG or MPEG-4 compression, which may increase the amount of content that may be included in a standard, 6-MHz (or other) QAM channel. Despite the use of such compression and other techniques, a significant amount of the bandwidth in QAM channels may be wasted. Such waste may result from existing service provider systems filling QAM channels with data packets in a non-deterministic fashion, which may cause null values or gaps to be included in the QAM channels. Such gaps may prevent even more content from being included in QAM channels, which may result in inefficient and less cost-effective transmission of content to user locations.